#marketing How To Master Your Web Testing To Drive Conversion

You’ve heard the advice a million times, right? “Prevention is better than cure.”

And on the surface, it makes sense.

But your launch date is looming and your development team are still trying to cram in all the features you need for your new website. So, your plans to carry out robust web testing across every device and platform gets pushed to one side.

You end up moving to your live environment without proper web testing and (to use another well-known phrase), the proverbial hits the fan.

Your customers complain about broken links. Or that your site doesn’t work on a specific device or operating system . And this means that they can’t buy from your business or interact with it in the way they expect. Not only will this result in negativity from your customers but there are so many other factors that occur as a knock-on effect. Unhappy stakeholders and job uncertainty to name just two.

Your development team goes into firefighting mode, trying to extinguish all the problems you’re under-tested and under-performing site has produced. But your users are sick of the poor user experience.

The result? The reputation of your brand is irreversibly damaged, your customers go elsewhere and your bottom line is sinking faster than you can say: “404 error”.

You’re not alone. The cut and thrust of launching real websites and apps mean that many companies don’t do adequate web testing.

But that’s not a good enough excuse. You simply cannot afford to wait for your customers to notify you of bugs or errors on your new website or app. If you use this slapdash approach then hundreds (or even thousands) of your customers will experience a problem with your site.

Whether that’s a broken link or a faulty sign-in, your brand reputation will take a hit.

If you’re an ecommerce site then the situation gets worse. Any bug that stops your customers filling up their shopping baskets and seamlessly clicking through to the checkout means that your conversion rates will plummet – and so will your sales figures.

Not every customer will let you know when they encounter a problem. Many will just give up and move on to one of your competitors to make that purchase. You lose brand loyalty with a huge chunk of your customer base, harming your sales in the long term.

So, what’s the solution?

Prevention really is better than cure. You need to choose a reliable web testing partner before your next release goes live to avoid these problems.

If you do, then your web testing capabilities are extended and your site will be scoured by a team of professional crowdsourced testers.

Such crowdsourced testing companies have the manpower to test your site thoroughly, on all of the devices your visitors use in just a few days and root out any dangerous ‘showstopper’ bugs. They’re dedicated to finding every issue and every bug so your customers don’t have to.

It means you’ll make your launch date, your developers are free to do their jobs instead of fixing a deluge of bugs, and your customers will love (and buy from) your new site.